Is it Good? Avengers vs. X-Men #0 Review

We’re eight days into Spring, March 28th to be exact, and the big Marvel Summer event begins today with Avengers vs. X-Men #0. Marvel’s Avenger writer extraordinaire Brian Bendis and newly minted X-Men writer Jasaon Aaron write this issue and it does a decent job setting up some of the major themes we’ll experience in the 12 part series. I’m not a big fan of Summer events, particularly when they are as long as this; when Fear Itself was extended to .1, .2, .3 issues past issue 7 then carried on into The Fearless 1-12, and is still going on today with The Mighty Thor I start to think this is no longer an event so much as an ongoing gimmick. Lets hope Avengers vs. X-Men stays put at 12.

Avengers vs. X-Men #0 (Marvel Comics)

For any penny pinchers out there know this issue delivers 30 pages for $3.99. Understand the pages are padded in the middle with 5 pages of dialogue between Cyclops and Hope that have been in free preview issues for the last few months, but 25 pages is still a decent number these days. Anyone expecting a full cast of characters to appear, you’re in luck, but understand they all stand around gawking at Scarlet Witch more than actually do anything. If you notice a pattern you’re on the right track. The book isn’t very deep in writing or action and is more a way to convey themes that will be touched on over the story arc.

If you’re a fan of MODOK you’ll love this issue. Also if you’re a fan of MODOK please kill yourself.

The book takes an interesting slant by having the heroes fight random and obscure villains to show where they are as far as mental state and ability to fight. Scarlet Witch shows up to stop MODOK from killing a Wakanda ambassador and she’s a tad rusty. Two female Avengers show up and tell her she just HAS to go say hello at the mansion. Are they dumb? They do realize everyone hates her guts still right? There’s a good sense that she’s out of sorts but wants to do the right thing. I suspect this story arc will show how she’s still a champion and get her back in the fold. I for one always liked her powers since they truly are original.

Cyclops needs to get a marketing expert to clean up peoples’ desire to punch him in the face.

On the mutant spectrum, Hope is clearly defined and explained. We get a taste of her powers as she beats the Serpent Society up, and this will definitely be the more interesting side of this event. Hope clearly thinks she can handle the Phoenix, but she also has some anger issues. At one point she punches a dude until her hands are dripping with blood. It’s a little hilarious when Cyclops just tells her to run off to Utopia when she’s clearly committed some serious acts of violence.

Reminds me of the time I was at a party and heard “Kakoom!” when somebody dropped their glass.

The art by Frank Cho is as always very clean and well storyboarded. Its safe to say the action is minimal though, and when the battles are between Hope and a team of snake themed villains, one can suspect they won’t be too floored by the action.

Wicked bad jet-pack edicate man.

As a person who hasn’t been following all the X-Men and Avengers books, this issue gets a good pulse on potentially two of the main characters and their emotional states. Assuming this event won’t just be fight scenes, God lets hope so, this comic actually gets me a little excited for the event. Up until now it appeared this was going to be a battle royale and that’s it.

Being able to kill us all is something special? It’s official. Cyclops is nuts.

This is definitely an issue people should at least flip through. By the end of the book I can see where things might go, but nothing truly important happens. This is yet another example where, if Marvel really did love their readers, they’d give us everything in this issue for free.

For a chick who floats around all the time those are some muscular legs.

Our weekly column, ComiX Weekly has been posted. Take a peak to see if this book can make our $10 budget. It can safely be said though, this issue would take a weak week of comics to make most budgets.